MUSIC INSPIRED BY A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Loudwire has put together a list of 12 killer tunes that were inspired by the Stanley Kubrick classic film of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. So if you've got Spotify, you can use this playlist right here...

If you DON'T have that app, no worries. You can find all of the above songs at the link... with the added bonus that most of them have videos with visual elements that are also taken directly from the film! Some of the selections will be a surprise, while some will be obvious. But, as the website notes:

Be it the novel or the cine, countless musicians have been inspired by A Clockwork Orange. From lyrics to costumes to artwork, these artists have found a way to take a timeless masterpiece and turn it into their own work of art. Below, you can find ten rock songs that have been influenced by A Clockwork Orange, as well as tons of spoilers for those who have not yet viddied or read it, so proceed with caution!

Here's my favorite of the bunch (and it's a late addition, making the playlist but not the article):

ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL PRESENTS "NEURAL KUBRICK" PROJECT

Well, this is an interesting project. The Bartlett School of Architecture's Interactive Architecture lab has put together a multifaceted project called Neural Kubrick, which kind of like... well... here, I'll let them explain it:

Stanley Kubrick in 1968 speculated on the arrival of human-level Artificial Intelligence in “2001 A Space Odyssey”. Some 16 years past his prediction, our project “Neural Kubrick” examines the state of the art in Machine Learning, using the latest in “Deep Neural Network” techniques to reinterpret and redirect Kubrick’s own films. Three machine learning algorithms take respective roles in our AI film crew; Art Director, Film Editor and Director of Photography. 

The outlook of the project is an artist-machine collaboration. The limitations of the machine are achieved by the artist and the limitations of the artist are achieved by the algorithm. In the context of the project, what the machine interprets is limited to either numbers, classification of features or generation of abstract images. This output is curated by us into a coherent narrative, translated back into human perception. 

The project is based on Stanley Kubrick’s movies as input for three machine learning models, namely The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and 2001 A Space Odyssey. The generated videos display a machinic interpretation of the three movies, through a collaborative effort between the artist and the algorithm.

Simple enough, right? No? Okay, maybe this "introduction video" will clear things up.

STILL TICKIN' - THE RETURN OF A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

An intriguing short-ish (43 minutes) documentary on the return to British theaters of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, which the filmmaker had long withdrawn from the UK market for a variety of reasons. This one was new to me, even though it's from 2000. Well done!

NEW CLOCKWORK ORANGE ARTWORK BY RORY KURTZ

Mondo artist Rory Kurtz shares his opinions on Clockwork Orange, as well as other films for which he has created exclusive poster artwork.

KUBRICK, PROKOFIEV, WOODY WOODPECKER: ART INSPIRING VIOLENCE

Animation scholar Tom Klein has done yeoman's work putting together this magnificent article for Cartoon Research discussing the potential influence that Kubrick's early love of hyper-violent cartoons may have played on his future film-making aesthetic. Entitled "Stanley Kubrick and Violent Cartoons: 1956", it begins:

In 1956, America was smitten with the good intentions of Alberta Siegel and suddenly cartoons were under scrutiny. For her Stanford doctoral work in psychology, she had arranged for twelve preschool children to watch the Comicolor cartoon The Little Red Hen (1934) and another twelve to watch what is described as “a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.” Afterward she observed the kids at play. You guessed it, she perceived the Little Red Hen group to be engaged in gentle play and the Woodpecker group was more likely to hit each other and break toys. 

Meanwhile, in that same year, Stanley Kubrick directed his first succesful feature film, titled The Killing no less. It might seem insane to think that there are any cinematic links between these events, but as Kubrick’s career progresses the argument could be made that he had obviously watched some Woody Woodpecker. Not just any cartoons, but specifically the brutal ones directed by Shamus Culhane.

Klein goes on to dig up some potentially new information about the semi-infamous incident where Stanley's little sister, Barbara, became so incensed over his repeated playing of a Prokofiev record on the family hi-fi that she ripped the record off the turntable and smashed it (in some versions of the story, over his head). Klein points out some intriguing intersections between Culhane and Kubrick's oeuvre, including the fact that both directors were deeply influenced by Podovkin and Eisenstein's theories. He also states that "although they were 20 years apart in age, the zeitgeist of the 1940s proved to be a formative period for both of them, and in this decade they steeped themselves in classic literature, avant-garde cinema, and modern art."

One of the more fascinating aspects of Klein's essay is the part where he breaks down specific areas where Kubrick may have been influenced by Culhane, particularly in the case of A Clockwork Orange. Klein lists, then explains, numerous potential connections between Clockwork and Culhane's cartoons. He writes:

The scene that many consider to be the single most depraved in A Clockwork Orange is the home invasion. Preying on the kindness of strangers, the Droogs brutalize a middle-age couple while Alex sings and dances “Singin’ in the Rain.” This flips the smiling cheer of the American Musical on its head and leaves audiences gasping in horror to see Alex savagely beating a man during the improvised performance. Of course, Woody had performed his on-screen brutality almost thirty years earlier, but as directed by Culhane the sequence stays just on this side of comedy. Without any provocation, he repeatedly swings his weapon but the man keeps dodging and then Woody allows his victim to escape the barbershop. Kubrick took the same notion to a very dark place and, in doing so, his film endures as one of the most provocative polemics on a modern society diseased with narcissism and casual violence.

Whether or not there was any kind of direct influence involved, Klein's observation nevertheless rings very true, and is definitely one worth making. In fact, the entire essay is pretty much must-read material for any fan of Kubrick, classic cartoons, and cinema in general. It might also give you a newfound respect for the work of the Walter Lantz Studio's long neglected animators, who are due for a renaissance now that Disney, Warner Bros, and the Fleischer Studio cartoons have finally received the mainstream acclaim and renown they so clearly merit.

I'll leave you with the cartoon that Klein sees as being somewhat parallel to Clockwork: "The Barber of Seville". Enjoy!

MORLOCK 2001, OR: HOW I LEARNED THAT SPOTTING RIP-OFFS CAN BE A PRETTY FUN PURSUIT IN AND OF ITSELF!

GROOVY SEXED UP EUROTRASH OMNIBUS COLLECTION COVER!

In my never-ending quest to find grist for my Kubrickologist’s mill, I recently stumbled across MORLOCK 2001, an incredibly bizarre mid-1970’s comic book published by Atlas Seaboard, a short-lived imprint that specialized in pumping out thinly disguised hit-and-run rip-offs of popular TV shows and films… often poaching ideas from two or three different properties in a single book. For instance, their TARGITT comic featured plots borrowed from the Steve McQueen hit film Bullitt, as well as The French Connection and Dirty Harry. In terms of pure, unadulterated plagiarism, however, MORLOCK 2001 stands head and shoulders above the competition. 

This was originally going to be a short and simple blog post pointing out a couple of age-inappropriate references to the films of Stanley Kubrick in a bizarro 70’s kid’s comic book, but the sheer volume, breadth, and shamelessness of the appropriations screamed out for a more complete accounting. So join me now as I comb through all three issues of this short-lived title in order to count down and catalog each and every stolen story element, copied concept, and misappropriated motif in MORLOCK 2001!

MORLOCK 2001 - THRILLING FIRST ISSUE!

First of all, of course, we have the title. MORLOCK 2001 is a mash-up of concepts from H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.

In Wells’ 1895 science fiction classic, The Time Machine, the Morlocks are a thuggish species of cannibalistic underground mutants living in the eight-hundredth century, AD. They are one of two species descended from mankind. The other species—the gentle, surface-dwelling Eloi—are used by the Morlocks both as slave labor and as a primary food source. Yummy! The only connection to the comic book is that the main character is named "Morlock", for some reason.

2001: A Space Odyssey, obviously, is the title of Stanley Kubrick’s most popular film, and the subsequent Arthur C. Clarke novel. In MORLOCK 2001, however, the titular year only refers to the fact that the events portrayed take place in... the year 2001.

Something else that is immediately apparent is that Morlock's look borrows heavily from two Marvel Comics characters who were coming into their own during roughly the same period: Morbius the Living Vampire, and Quicksilver.

The very first panel on the very first page describes the story's setting as "a rigid totalitarian regime" run on the basis of lies and propaganda. I don't know about you guys, but that kind of sounds like the setting for George Orwell's classic novel of political dystopia, Nineteen-Eighty-Four to me! Keep reading to find out whether or not this intuition eventually pays off (hint: it does).

At this point, I would like to thank comics blogger The Groovy Agent for making every page of all three issues of MORLOCK 2001—as well as invaluable insights into all the rip-offs involved—available via his website, Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

In his discussion of the first issue (where you can also find the issue's scanned pages), he explains that due to the popularity of comic book characters Swamp Thing, at DC, and Man-Thing, at Marvel, writer Michael Fleisher was tasked to come up with a plant-based superhero that Atlas Seaboard could call their own...

...which I guess explains why the first character we encounter in the book is some dude whispering sweet nothings to a bunch of long-stem roses.

Unfortunately, Flower Man's reverie is cut short by the arrival of a gang of fascistic government thugs who spew venom about the presence of books in the scientist's home before spewing napalm all over his private library and greenhouse, setting the whole place alight in a not-so-subtle tip of the hat to the "Firemen" concept from Ray Bradbury's dystopian future classic, Fahrenheit 451!

Tangentially, the second goon from the right in the panel above has a bit of dialogue that reminds me of something Alex says about being "as clear as an unmuddied lake" in A Clockwork Orange... but in all likelihood that's a stretch too far.

Further cementing the Nineteen Eighty-Four reference is the above panel's Thought Police van, complete with Big Brother-esque all-seeing-eye logo. So we have Ray Bradbury's Firemen riding around in George Orwell's Thought Police van. This is, quite frankly, rip-off approaching the level of an artform! Which brings us to our hero's "big reveal", in which we discover...

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE, EAT YOUR UM... "HEART" OUT!

...that he is grown from a POD! Which makes Morlock a Pod Person, just like in Jack Finney's thrice-filmed (as Invasion of the Body Snatchers) 1954 science-fiction novel, The Body Snatchers! Of course, being a Pod Person means that poor Morlock is tabula rasa—a blank slate—which makes him an ideal candidate for a bit of psychedelic/psychotronic brainwashing/indoctrination… just like in the Anthony Burgess novel (and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film) A Clockwork Orange. Some of the slogans being drilled into Morlock's head, you will note, come straight out of Orwell's Newspeak glossary, too. And that buzz-cut-sporting finger-pointer succinctly describes the tactics of Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministry of Truth when he says that "it's the duty of the government to change the truth from day to day to meet the changing situations". See? I told you that Orwell hunch would pay off!

After he's indoctrinated, Morlock becomes a government assassin with a unique way of killing. All he needs to do is brush up against a person, touching his bare skin to theirs, and that person rapidly devolves into a pile of green, leafy plant matter! It's a lonely life for Morlock, and the only solace he finds is feeding the pigeons in a park near the institute where he's warehoused between murder jobs. One day, Morlock is approached by a blonde-haired beauty who discovers that Morlock—like Frankenstein’s monster before him—doesn't know the meaning of the word "friend".

As you can well imagine, this sets the stage for Morlock's discovery of betrayal. The lovely blonde-haired girl was actually working for the Regime, having been given the task of reassuring Morlock that his murderous work was all for the Greater Good. Upon learning of this betrayal, Morlock's rage causes him to manifest a new power, which causes him to transform—not unlike the Incredible Hulk, but who also is the spitting image of the infamous Ocraman—into a rampaging tree monster that makes short shrift of that two-faced, mini-skirted Jezebel!

NICE ASS!

And so ends the first issue of MORLOCK 2001, with the first appearance of the "Swamp Creature" aspect of our titular hero.

REMIND YOU OF ANYONE?

The second issue, featuring a story titled "Morlock Must Be Destroyed"—itself a play on the 1969 film title Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed—begins with Morlock on the run. You can once again download scans of every page of this issue courtesy of our friends at the Diversions of the Groovy Kind blog.

It's in this issue that we have one of the most jarring, out of place, age-inappropriate rip-offs of this entire series. Near the beginning of the issue, Morlock is chased across town before jumping off an overpass and landing in a train. There, he is accosted by a group of rail-riding hobos who happen to look and sound a whole lot like a slightly more colorful version of Alex and his gang of Droogs from Stanley Kubrick's ultraviolent, X-rated version of Anthony Burgess' dystopian science-fiction novel A Clockwork Orange. I mean, just look at these guys! The Alex clone even says "Well, well, well"!

Unfortunately for these fashion-conscious yobbos, they take a fancy to Morlock's shiny silver gloves and try to nick them, which unleashes his "touch of death" murder-by-botany powers, not unlike Boris Karloff's cursed hands in The Invisible Ray. Soon, the Droog-a-likes are reduced to leafy green topiary.

Fast forward a few pages and Morlock is rescuing a little blind girl from the clutches of a couple of distinctly nonthreatening Heap-like monsters who look like a cross between the Yeti and last year's yard composting.

Having bested the beasts, Morlock meets their maker: a scientist who is engaged in research quite similar to the work of Morlock's own creator, the rose-sniffing fella who was gunned down by the "firemen" in the opening pages of the first issue of MORLOCK 2001!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that beloved TV detective Kojak stops in for a brief cameo in this issue!

Grateful to Morlock for having rescued his blind daughter, the scientist repays him by... trapping him in a barn and calling the authorities on him in order to collect the substantial cash reward being offered to any citizen who assists the State in locating Morlock. The doctor's blind daughter, sensing some good in Morlock and herself grateful for being saved from the "heap" beasts sneaks out of her room at night, unlocks the barn door in an effort to free Morlock from his temporary prison. Unfortunately for her, Morlock's rage has caused him to revert into his mindless tree-beast form, and he promptly devours her.

Yup, that's right. Our hero kills and eats a helpless little blind girl in the midst of her trying to help him escape! But that's okay... Morlock has the good taste to feel some pretty heavy, Wolfman-style guilt about the whole thing...

As comic blogger Steve Does Comics notes: “I'm starting to spot a certain pattern to Morlock. He meets someone unpleasant and kills them by touching them. He then encounters a girl, befriends her then eats her. There's probably some sort of metaphor for life in there though I'm struggling to spot what it is.”

And so we reach the third and final issue of MORLOCK 2001, this time with a sub-title that is actually bigger than the main title: MORLOCK 2001 MIDNIGHT MEN! Things are distinctly different this time out, with legendary Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko providing pencils, inked by legendary Swamp Thing artist Bernie Wrightson (not that original series artist Al Milgrom did a bad job... in fact, I think I prefered his work overall). Talk about spoilers; they show the death of Morlock, which occurs at the end of the issue, on the cover! And it doesn't even look like him!

Uh oh! Time for a little more exposition and backstory about the Fahrenheit 451 brigades kicking in doors and starting fires in piles of books!

Of course, it just wouldn't be Ditko if we didn't get a psychedelic freak-out scene or two, and the man provides them in spades with this colorful recap of Morlock's origin tale (after all, it's been two issues since last we saw this information)!

Meanwhile, deep underground (literally), a revolutionary cell is rising up against the Bradbury/Orwell/Burgess dystopia. They are led by a mysterious burned man who feels no pain. This same revolutionary puts a bullet between Morlock's eyes the moment he has no further use for him. It's an odd, unexpected and inglorious denouement that leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth, especially when you realise that this is how the series ends... with yet another betrayal for Morlock (who seemed to possess more intelligence in his tree form in this issue than in the last two) ending in his death.

And it's a forever death, at that. There have been no subsequent attempts at resurrection or ret-conning. Kind of surprised nobody's thought of putting out a new Morlock book yet, to be honest. I think there's some promise there. But it will have to wait for another time. I need to go to BED for Pete's sake!

I hope you had as much fun reading this as I did finding all the references. I'm sure I missed a couple, but the only really "important" ones for this blog's purposes are the Kubrick references, of course, and I'm quite sure I spotted them all... unless Humbert Humbert is stalking around the background in some of the darker panels...

Cheers!

yer old pal Jerky

MALCOLM McDOWELL AND ANTHONY BURGESS TALK CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Thanks to the folks at Dangerous Minds / The Playlist for bringing this televisual gem to our attention. While Kubrick refused to engage the sometimes rabid critics of his film, he did occasionally send out the film's star and the author of the novel upon which it was based to do this on his behalf. It makes for compelling viewing, that's for sure. Enjoy!

IRVINE WELSH ON THE SAVAGE GREATNESS OF A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

From a think-piece on the legacy of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange, written for the Telegraph UK, published October 1st of this year:

Few writers, whatever the claims made for them by literary critics, ever manage to spawn big cultural moments. One who genuinely did so was Anthony Burgess, with his novel A Clockwork Orange. And, as novelists are often contrary by nature, he was highly ambivalent about this state of affairs. Burgess would disparagingly refer to the book, published in 1962, as a “novella”, regarding it as an inconsequential sliver of his Brobdingnagian canon. He blamed (and there’s really no other term for it) the book’s resonance on the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, which appeared nine years later. 

My generation was obsessed with this stylistic, inventive affair, a movie that spurned both mainstream Hollywood concerns and European art house affectations to stake out a unique terrain for British independent cinema. Kubrick’s movie was an influence on the Ziggy-era David Bowie, and it was those cool credentials that made me backtrack to the film, which I first saw at a late-night screening several years after its release. As is generally the way of those things, far fewer of us had enjoyed any exposure to the novel. As a writer who has had many of his own books adapted for screen, I’m a little uncomfortable at conceding that I was in this camp. 

(snip) 

Much of Burgess’s enmity towards his creation stems from the missing last chapter in the American editions of the novel. His US publisher omitted it on the quasi-religious principle, beloved of that culture, that over here all is good, while across the street evil abounds. This is the childlike thinking that allows authors, film-makers and governments to create monsters in order to terrorise and manipulate the domestic population of that nation. 

In this final chapter, Burgess has Alex growing out of his wrongdoings, looking back and regarding it as all a little bit sad and embarrassing – the antics of daft kids – and, as the cliché goes, determined that his own children won’t make the same mistakes he did. Basically, it’s the beautiful truth of redemption, and the stunningly mundane lesson of real life. It profoundly isn’t dramatic; but it has social truth, intellectual honesty and the intrinsic morality of proper storytelling. This raises the uncomfortable question: which is more important to the novelist? To the reader? 

Burgess originally agreed to dispense with chapter 21 for money but, once he had made enough, insisted that it was reinserted. He was correct in doing this, although you can understand why Stanley Kubrick, though filming in Britain, chose to work from the US edition and omitted it. This understandably was a running sore for Burgess, though his ire was directed not at the film-maker, with whom he remained on good terms, but his American publishers.

Read the rest of this intriguing piece at the link provided above. Also, if you plan on reading any of Irvine Welsh's novels, I'd recommend Filth. It's pretty crazy.

CLOCKWORK ORANGE BABIES?!

Brazil-based graphic designer Butcher Billy has created some visually striking designs for a project that he refers to as A Clockwork Orange Babies. Oh, and in case you're so blown away by his designs that you'd like to cover your carcass with them, BB puts his designs on t-shirts, posters and other such collectibles and tchotchkes, and sells them via his online store. Enjoy!